USAID joins fight against coffee rust

By:nicaragua Dispatch | May 20, 2014

The coffee rust fungus has been damaging to Nicaragua's coffee exports, but less so to high altitude coffee grown in Jinotega (pictured)

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) on Monday announced a $5 million partnership with Texas A&M University’s World Coffee Research to eliminate coffee rust (known as “roya” in Spanish), a plant disease that has caused severe damage to Central America’s coffee industry over the past two years.

The partnership, according to a USAIS press release, will “support research on rust-resistant coffee varieties, address the shortage of disease-resistant coffee seedlings, and expand the capability of the region’s coffee institutions to monitor and respond to coffee rust.”

Central America’s smallholder farmers grow the bulk of the region’s specialty coffee, a lucrative commodity that is in increasingly high demand in the United States and around the world. With USAID’s investment, research will focus on establishing a more resilient and higher quality regional coffee sector. — USAID

“Coffee rust threatens more than your morning coffee—it affects jobs, businesses, and the security of millions across the Americas,” said USAID’s Associate Administrator Mark Feierstein. “We must tackle this outbreak to ensure farmers and laborers have stable incomes, don’t start growing illicit crops, or be forced to migrate because they can no longer support their families. This partnership will tap innovative solutions to address the immediate and long-term impacts of coffee rust and help this key agriculture sector rebound.”

The current coffee rust outbreak is the worst in Latin America’s history. Reasons for current outbreak are varied, but USAID plant experts say that climate change is exacerbating the crisis. It is estimated that production will fall by as much as 15-40% in the coming years, which could trigger job losses exceeding 500,000. Decreased production may lead to decreases in incomes for smallholder farmers, making it harder to afford the fungicides and plant maintenance necessary to control the disease. The negative impacts of coffee rust go beyond the farmers and businesses that support the industry—seasonal laborers and their families are losing an import source of income. —USAID

Overall, USAID says its is investing $14 million in the fight against coffee rust.

In Nicaragua, where coffee production employs half a million people in the countryside, the coffee rust epidemic was devastating to last year’s harvest. According to official government statistics, Nicaraguan coffee exports plummeted 21% last year, representing losses of $170 million. Overall, coffee went from being Nicaragua’s top export product in 2012 to third (behind gold and beef) in 2013.

Similar losses are reported in other Central American countries.

The Nicaraguan Coffee Growers Union said last year that Nicaragua needs to invest $12 million to prevent the spread of the coffee rust fungus, and up to $150 million to fully replant damaged coffee plants in the coming years. The rust fungus has mostly affected coffee grown in the lowlands; high-altitude coffee production is less affected.

The Sandinista government, which was heavily criticized for ignoring the problem for the first year of the coffee-rust plague, eventually promised aid to farmers. But coffee producers claim the government has not followed through on its promises.

More About

Adding a wrinkle of confusion to a mystery shrouded in doubt, a spokesman for the Chinese canal in Nicaragua announced that the route has been redrawn to circumvent a farming community that has been energetically protesting the $50 billion project for months. Nicaraguan canal spokesman Telemaco Talavera announced last weekend that the canal route has been pushed south to sidestep the community of El Tule and the protected San Miguelito wetlands on the eastern shore of Lake Nicaragua.

Nicaragua's exports grew 17.5% in 2012 to finish the year with a record-setting $2.78 billion in sales, not including free-trade zone products, according to the Center for Export Processing (CETREX). While many export products benefited from sustained commodity prices, which on average increased slightly last year, Nicaragua also increased its total export volume by 16.2% from 2011.

Forget politics, this is bad news.
I grow coffee and even though I could increase production by taking most of the big trees in the cafetales and allowing the direct sunlight to energize the coffee plant I have not done so.
The shadow in coffee plantations allows the beneficial bugs to survive and one the things they do is eat the bad bugs, roya among others.
If you look at a healthy coffee leave (grown under lightly regulated shadow) you will notice a white cloth like silk like fungus that is the one protecting the plant. With to much sun it dies and stop protecting the plant.
If we could respect our planet and be decent about it, we could go a long way.

(posted Jan 26, 11:15 pm) —Nicaragua’s opposition Independent Liberal Party (PLI) today called on President Daniel Ortega to work towards finding a peaceful solution to growing political violence in the northern mountains of Jinotega after a weekend attack with a mysterious backpack bomb killed three alleged rearmed contras in the municipality of Pantasma.

Adding a wrinkle of confusion to a mystery shrouded in doubt, a spokesman for the Chinese canal in Nicaragua announced that the route has been redrawn to circumvent a farming community that has been energetically protesting the $50 billion project for months.

In Case You Missed It

Editorial
With an obsequious bow to Russian expansionism, Nicaragua this week joined North Korea, Syria, Sudan, Venezuela, Zimbabwe and five other model democracies in rejecting a UN resolution that reaffirms the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Ukraine. The UN resolution, which calls the Crimea referendum invalid and urges a “peaceful resolution” to the crisis following Russia’s annexation of the peninsula, was supported by 100 nations and rejected by 11.

As Sandinista faithful mobilize in the streets of Managua to pay homage to former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez on the one-year anniversary of his death, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan analysts predict the international project he started won’t outlive its founder for much longer. President Daniel Ortega, who is traveling to Venezuela to pay official tribute to his former benefactor, honored Chávez as a revolutionary who “fought for the people, fought for America, fought for humanity, fought for peace and fought for justice.”
Prior to leaving for the airport today, Ortega said that now, “more than ever,” the countries belonging to the alliance created by Chávez will “continue to fight for peace, for justice, for liberty and for the sovereignty of our people.”
But just a year after the loss of Chávez’s charismatic leadership, and amid the ruin of Venezuela’s economy, the Bolivarian Alliance for Our Americas (ALBA) —Chávez’s brainchild for regional integration — appears to be collapsing under the weight of its own ambition.